The first time I tried CW, I really thought it was sub-par. Then, I tried the other classes, and finally got the mechanics of the game right. The CW is the most difficult class to play with, but if correctly used it's the most rewarding one. And its potential starts to show early, since level 8 or so. The second time I tried it, restarting it from scratch, I finally got what's that for. CW is about throwing the right things at the right enemies and at the right time; plus, it's triple (almost 4) teleport-in-a-row abilty gives you unparalleled ability to get away from action and get tactical control over it.
Magic missle has the highest range of all the weapons in the game. You can start killing things from very afar, and stack arcane power, which gives you a casting bonus on the next spells; by the time a mob of 3 reaches you, it's pretty dead. Just, you must start hitting targets from the maximum distance, so that when they reach you, your punch is way way stronger than those of the other classes.
When forced in smaller spaces, use the choke on the boss and fire missles on the mob; you'll have already extra arcane for extra punch to kill the mob even if it starts nearer. Once the mob is down, you have arcane stacked at five and you can get rid of the boss easily.
Use the ice bolt to reduce the mob taking away a weakling before starting the fight; it's the most powerful, fast and long ranged single-hit weapon in the game, so decide which weakling goes away and repeat the common strategy on the others.
When you have icy channel, you can double the strategy, using either ice or arcane depending on the situation. The ice ray does extra damage and stack faster on the targets being chilled, exp the one you put icy channel on; you can ice bolt the boss, icy channel it and then pin it down with the ray; that will take down most of the small bosses, and then you can just teleport a few times and get rid of the mob with the arcane strategy; or you can ice channel the boss, fry one mob with the ice bolt and the ice ray, then finish the boss using choke/missle combo (btw, missle do extra damages on chocking targets).
Finally, CW mage dalies are the most powerful in the game, both in terms of damage and effect.
One thing CW requires is deep thought and MUCH tactical sense. In 2-3 seconds a fight can last, it's not easy to do it, but it's doable; if you're able to, CW is for you and it storms the field, literally. If screw it up, then CW is the hardest class to handle out of trouble. If you simply can't draw a tactical plan in so little time, stick with another class.
I thought the game play was very fun. I had less of a potion habit than some, apparently, but I also played with a partner rather than solo.
I was disappointed, however, with the lack of variety of spells, perpetual ice is pretty boring. Where's fire, acid, lightening (yes I know there are some at high levels but why that limit?), and other various things. Where are the traditional D&D spells? Many people are mentioning the missing "Crowd Control" aspect of the "Controller" Wizard. Spells like Meteor Swarm, Stinking Cloud, Poison Cloud, Ice Storm, etc. are crowd control or at least crowd dps. This game seems to have a lot of mobs, surely those type of spells would make sense? I also cannot imagine a D&D Wizard who can't use Fireball:rolleyes:. For real? What the heck? Some mentioned maybe the Warlock would have the fire spells, but why? A large part of the fun of playing a Wizard is in picking your spells. While you could pick your feats, you were spoonfed the spells. That sucks, IMHO. I would like to see A LOT MORE choices. Gear sucked too. The Wizard Garb all looked the same and that same was ridiculous. Looked like something out of a Circus. There should be much much much more variety there.
"I really enjoyed this class, especially after getting the Stealing Time power. The chill/ice mage route is lame imo. I wiped clean everything up to lvl 30 (as far as I had time to play) using all arcane-type powers except ray of frost (to lock up heavies) and ice storm since I fell short of the required level for singularity. I ended up with highest damage and kills on every group instance I went with post level 20. Much more fun than any of the other classes so far. Really easy to manage (dare I say...control) the battlefield. I solo'd 100% of the game except (obviously) the mandatory groups
Not exactly the DnD I'm used to, but this game is sooooooooo addicting. Can't wait for more.
Start with Magic missiles or, even better a daily arcane power to build a stack of arcane mastery (AM), then: Stealing time>Repel, for group control/mass death.
Magic missiles to build arcane mastery then: Ray of enfeeblement>Stealing time> force choke thingy>Repel, for single opponents.
Ray of enfeeblement is very subtle but great with stack of AM"
I dig it so far.
"Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny" - Frank Zappa
So far the controlling wizard is the class I enjoy the most. I was able to practically tank the entire storming the keep final boss just by using my control abilities. What it sounds like people are expecting that are complaining is huge DPS and infinite control. Control doesn't mean lock down and mobs just stand their taking hits. Control also means weakening and positioning, and that's exactly what I kept doing. And because of teleport I was pretty hard to even hurt, while the warriors kept trying to face tank against the boss and dying a lot not understanding what I was saying about not standing there.
It is my favorite class so far, but it takes finesse to play it. When it comes to PvP, I wouldn't doubt that the controlling wizard will probably be the best at controlling the battlefield to.
I wonder which game you were playing because 99% of your control abilities dont work on that boss. They are immune to them.
And tanks should tank but not stand there?
I cant wait to hear more.
So far the controlling wizard is the class I enjoy the most. I was able to practically tank the entire storming the keep final boss just by using my control abilities. What it sounds like people are expecting that are complaining is huge DPS and infinite control. Control doesn't mean lock down and mobs just stand their taking hits. Control also means weakening and positioning, and that's exactly what I kept doing. And because of teleport I was pretty hard to even hurt, while the warriors kept trying to face tank against the boss and dying a lot not understanding what I was saying about not standing there.
It is my favorite class so far, but it takes finesse to play it. When it comes to PvP, I wouldn't doubt that the controlling wizard will probably be the best at controlling the battlefield to.
With what abilities as it is all the cc abilities last a second and a half at most
"Never pay more than 20 bucks for a computer game."-Guybrush Threepwood
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."-Hunter S. Thompson
I managed to level a CW to 16 (spare time not being one of my strong points). My thoughts mirror many of the concerns expressed in this thread. The CW felt hard work, and seemed sub-par compared to other classes I played with. Although I did not have to munch healing potions all the time, but there were definite times when I chain drank them (like a boss fight with adds) - admittedly I did not die.
The main concern for me is not really how long the CC abilities work for, but that there are not sufficient AoE CC abilities at low levels (ie yet). The spell mastered repulse is nice, but that and some dailies (not really usable for control, as they are not up enough) seem to be it for AoE control. However against single-targets (esp. bosses) I felt quite in control - partly because the bosses telegraph huge, slow hits - and partly because we have some good single target CC. Against large groups, it was more of a mad scramble with no real feeling of control - esp as repulse doesn't push them all back the same direction.
The self-root on cast I found to be very un-action combat friendly and the cast and move time for teleport really does not synergies with the CC powers duration - you cannot even use them as a gap creation tool!
I would also say that some of the frost / ice powers seem a bit weak - esp. Ray of Frost. Chill seems to stack very slowly and the slow effect does not seem to be significant enough to enable us to actually stay out of harms way due to the rooting effect of powers (lets us do a bit more damage). In addition the RoF damage is relatively weak and the freeze lasts almost no time.
Finally we seem to be missing iconic D&D spells: such as color spray, sleep, web and fireball. I think I would have liked a choice in my selection of powers - both at-will and encounter - although I understand why this is probably not going to happen (i.e. balance).
0
oliinMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited March 2013
So I got to play Friday and a bit on Sunday where I got my CW to 20 just a little bit before the weekend ended. (I got a Trickster Rogue to 15 in about half the time on Sunday). I have to say, it's a pretty good DPS class, but absolutely wretched as a 'control' class. I tried playing specifically for control for a while, but my survivability doing that wasn't so great and I switched to ignoring control in favor of DPS and started doing significantly better. I was either the #1 or #2 on the damage dealt charts for every skirmish and dungeon run I went on (3 times through the clock tower). Really not what I was expecting given the name of the class.
So there's a couple issues as I see it. Bosses
If you're going to attempt to specifically make a crowd control class it's very frustrating for the players of that class when very few to none of their control powers work on the bosses of the game. Control abilities already have incredibly short durations in Neverwinter and I don't really think that even on a full team of Control Wizards they would be able to completely lock down a boss anyway (I might possibly be wrong there) so why not let the powers at least have some effect on the things. Maybe at least let them snare or debuff the boss instead if you have to. I didn't find my Control Wizard to be terribly good at AoE control either so I couldn't even control the adds in boss fights effectively; I seemed to be better served by switching out any control powers I had to DPS ones.
Lack of Control:
I'm not going to sugar coat it here, the Control Wizard's ability to actually control things is sub-par at best.
I found the snare effects from Ray of Frost and the like were barely noticeable. Unless you stacked a lot of ice encounter powers on an enemy/area Ray of Frost took three seconds to lock up an enemy for at most a second and effectively did nothing to bosses.
The duration of Entangling Force was almost entirely negligible; the daze on the Trickster Rogue's first encounter power seemed to last longer and was available more frequently.
Icy Terrain too entirely too long to ramp up into doing anything remotely control worthy. I was expecting a knockdown followed by some sort of snare like the spell in the Player's Handbook when I first saw the power, or even possibly a root, but sadly no.
Repel is fantastic solo, but a giant pain in the *** to melee-oriented party members in teams. Especially so in a game like this which positioning relative to an enemy does things like granting combat advantage.
The lack of any significant, effective AoE controls up to level 20 is particularly damning for a control oriented class. Any class should realistically be able to fulfill its role for at least that first dungeon and by that point the only truly effective (non-daily) AoE control power I ever saw was the cleric's AoE root. Lack of any really effective control powers just means the CW is mostly likely to fall back on simply being DPS, which as I mentioned I found I was quite a bit more effective.
Poorly presented class mechanic:
I only stumbled on the tab ability of the Control Wizard a couple of levels after 10 by accident. I probably would have noticed if I wasn't in a leveling rush due to my relatively short available play-time this weekend. That aside however, there was no brief UI tutorial for the mechanic like there was for my Trickster Rogue and their stealth.
Poor UI:
All the other classes have a UI element showing them how much stealth, divine power, block they have available to them. I saw no such UI element showing how many stack of arcane power CWs had. I honestly still have no clue where that was supposed to show for me. Maybe my UI just wasn't working correctly, I don't know.
Since most enemy health bars are only above their head it was nigh impossible to tell how many stacks of chill were on enemies that weren't right on top of me. Any other time it was very difficult to make out the teeny number in the icon since I largely engage from range. Granted there's the visual representation of the enemies legs freezing over (which has minimal effect on their movement speed ....), but it would be nice to have an enemy target health bar that stayed a consistent size. It would be much easier to monitor debuffs/stacks of chill/ect.
Poor range choices:
On the one hand the at-will powers and a good number of the encounter powers have some of the longest ranges in the game. On the other hand most of the powers with possibly stronger control components (daily powers, encounter powers with stronger control components) are almost entirely PBAoE or melee ranged. I imagine the lower stamina cost of teleport might somewhat make up for this and if all control heavy powers had similarly close range it wouldn't bother me. The cleric has some fairly effective control powers that are ranged though so I really don't see the reasoning behind this design choice.
Over all I had fun, but it's most certainly not what I was expecting a 'control' class to be given its 'meh' control ability and fairly respectable DPS capability. I think the whole arcane/ice dichotomy is unfortunate and likely there simply because WoW spellcasters had a control focused ice branch and that's truly unfortunate. There's a metric ton of iconic D&D control spells available to Wizards and you've used nearly none of them. Where are things like web, grease, sleep, glitterdust, hold person, or even color spray? It's a little unfortunate I have to say. I don't imagine that will be able to be changed before release, but please look into the Control Wizard's ability to actually control enemies.
Comments
Magic missle has the highest range of all the weapons in the game. You can start killing things from very afar, and stack arcane power, which gives you a casting bonus on the next spells; by the time a mob of 3 reaches you, it's pretty dead. Just, you must start hitting targets from the maximum distance, so that when they reach you, your punch is way way stronger than those of the other classes.
When forced in smaller spaces, use the choke on the boss and fire missles on the mob; you'll have already extra arcane for extra punch to kill the mob even if it starts nearer. Once the mob is down, you have arcane stacked at five and you can get rid of the boss easily.
Use the ice bolt to reduce the mob taking away a weakling before starting the fight; it's the most powerful, fast and long ranged single-hit weapon in the game, so decide which weakling goes away and repeat the common strategy on the others.
When you have icy channel, you can double the strategy, using either ice or arcane depending on the situation. The ice ray does extra damage and stack faster on the targets being chilled, exp the one you put icy channel on; you can ice bolt the boss, icy channel it and then pin it down with the ray; that will take down most of the small bosses, and then you can just teleport a few times and get rid of the mob with the arcane strategy; or you can ice channel the boss, fry one mob with the ice bolt and the ice ray, then finish the boss using choke/missle combo (btw, missle do extra damages on chocking targets).
Finally, CW mage dalies are the most powerful in the game, both in terms of damage and effect.
One thing CW requires is deep thought and MUCH tactical sense. In 2-3 seconds a fight can last, it's not easy to do it, but it's doable; if you're able to, CW is for you and it storms the field, literally. If screw it up, then CW is the hardest class to handle out of trouble. If you simply can't draw a tactical plan in so little time, stick with another class.
I was disappointed, however, with the lack of variety of spells, perpetual ice is pretty boring. Where's fire, acid, lightening (yes I know there are some at high levels but why that limit?), and other various things. Where are the traditional D&D spells? Many people are mentioning the missing "Crowd Control" aspect of the "Controller" Wizard. Spells like Meteor Swarm, Stinking Cloud, Poison Cloud, Ice Storm, etc. are crowd control or at least crowd dps. This game seems to have a lot of mobs, surely those type of spells would make sense? I also cannot imagine a D&D Wizard who can't use Fireball:rolleyes:. For real? What the heck? Some mentioned maybe the Warlock would have the fire spells, but why? A large part of the fun of playing a Wizard is in picking your spells. While you could pick your feats, you were spoonfed the spells. That sucks, IMHO. I would like to see A LOT MORE choices. Gear sucked too. The Wizard Garb all looked the same and that same was ridiculous. Looked like something out of a Circus. There should be much much much more variety there.
"I really enjoyed this class, especially after getting the Stealing Time power. The chill/ice mage route is lame imo. I wiped clean everything up to lvl 30 (as far as I had time to play) using all arcane-type powers except ray of frost (to lock up heavies) and ice storm since I fell short of the required level for singularity. I ended up with highest damage and kills on every group instance I went with post level 20. Much more fun than any of the other classes so far. Really easy to manage (dare I say...control) the battlefield. I solo'd 100% of the game except (obviously) the mandatory groups
Not exactly the DnD I'm used to, but this game is sooooooooo addicting. Can't wait for more.
Start with Magic missiles or, even better a daily arcane power to build a stack of arcane mastery (AM), then: Stealing time>Repel, for group control/mass death.
Magic missiles to build arcane mastery then: Ray of enfeeblement>Stealing time> force choke thingy>Repel, for single opponents.
Ray of enfeeblement is very subtle but great with stack of AM"
I dig it so far.
I wonder which game you were playing because 99% of your control abilities dont work on that boss. They are immune to them.
And tanks should tank but not stand there?
I cant wait to hear more.
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."-Hunter S. Thompson
The main concern for me is not really how long the CC abilities work for, but that there are not sufficient AoE CC abilities at low levels (ie yet). The spell mastered repulse is nice, but that and some dailies (not really usable for control, as they are not up enough) seem to be it for AoE control. However against single-targets (esp. bosses) I felt quite in control - partly because the bosses telegraph huge, slow hits - and partly because we have some good single target CC. Against large groups, it was more of a mad scramble with no real feeling of control - esp as repulse doesn't push them all back the same direction.
The self-root on cast I found to be very un-action combat friendly and the cast and move time for teleport really does not synergies with the CC powers duration - you cannot even use them as a gap creation tool!
I would also say that some of the frost / ice powers seem a bit weak - esp. Ray of Frost. Chill seems to stack very slowly and the slow effect does not seem to be significant enough to enable us to actually stay out of harms way due to the rooting effect of powers (lets us do a bit more damage). In addition the RoF damage is relatively weak and the freeze lasts almost no time.
Finally we seem to be missing iconic D&D spells: such as color spray, sleep, web and fireball. I think I would have liked a choice in my selection of powers - both at-will and encounter - although I understand why this is probably not going to happen (i.e. balance).
So there's a couple issues as I see it.
Bosses
If you're going to attempt to specifically make a crowd control class it's very frustrating for the players of that class when very few to none of their control powers work on the bosses of the game. Control abilities already have incredibly short durations in Neverwinter and I don't really think that even on a full team of Control Wizards they would be able to completely lock down a boss anyway (I might possibly be wrong there) so why not let the powers at least have some effect on the things. Maybe at least let them snare or debuff the boss instead if you have to. I didn't find my Control Wizard to be terribly good at AoE control either so I couldn't even control the adds in boss fights effectively; I seemed to be better served by switching out any control powers I had to DPS ones.
Lack of Control:
I'm not going to sugar coat it here, the Control Wizard's ability to actually control things is sub-par at best.
- I found the snare effects from Ray of Frost and the like were barely noticeable. Unless you stacked a lot of ice encounter powers on an enemy/area Ray of Frost took three seconds to lock up an enemy for at most a second and effectively did nothing to bosses.
- The duration of Entangling Force was almost entirely negligible; the daze on the Trickster Rogue's first encounter power seemed to last longer and was available more frequently.
- Icy Terrain too entirely too long to ramp up into doing anything remotely control worthy. I was expecting a knockdown followed by some sort of snare like the spell in the Player's Handbook when I first saw the power, or even possibly a root, but sadly no.
- Repel is fantastic solo, but a giant pain in the *** to melee-oriented party members in teams. Especially so in a game like this which positioning relative to an enemy does things like granting combat advantage.
The lack of any significant, effective AoE controls up to level 20 is particularly damning for a control oriented class. Any class should realistically be able to fulfill its role for at least that first dungeon and by that point the only truly effective (non-daily) AoE control power I ever saw was the cleric's AoE root. Lack of any really effective control powers just means the CW is mostly likely to fall back on simply being DPS, which as I mentioned I found I was quite a bit more effective.Poorly presented class mechanic:
I only stumbled on the tab ability of the Control Wizard a couple of levels after 10 by accident. I probably would have noticed if I wasn't in a leveling rush due to my relatively short available play-time this weekend. That aside however, there was no brief UI tutorial for the mechanic like there was for my Trickster Rogue and their stealth.
Poor UI:
Poor range choices:
On the one hand the at-will powers and a good number of the encounter powers have some of the longest ranges in the game. On the other hand most of the powers with possibly stronger control components (daily powers, encounter powers with stronger control components) are almost entirely PBAoE or melee ranged. I imagine the lower stamina cost of teleport might somewhat make up for this and if all control heavy powers had similarly close range it wouldn't bother me. The cleric has some fairly effective control powers that are ranged though so I really don't see the reasoning behind this design choice.
Over all I had fun, but it's most certainly not what I was expecting a 'control' class to be given its 'meh' control ability and fairly respectable DPS capability. I think the whole arcane/ice dichotomy is unfortunate and likely there simply because WoW spellcasters had a control focused ice branch and that's truly unfortunate. There's a metric ton of iconic D&D control spells available to Wizards and you've used nearly none of them. Where are things like web, grease, sleep, glitterdust, hold person, or even color spray? It's a little unfortunate I have to say. I don't imagine that will be able to be changed before release, but please look into the Control Wizard's ability to actually control enemies.